1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an ink composition for use in recording by an ink-jet method, and an ink-jet recording method using the ink composition.
2. Description of the Related Art
Various methods have been proposed for image recording methods for recording color images in recent years. However, in all of these methods, improvements are still demanded with respect to the quality level of recorded objects in relation to, for example, quality of image, texture, and curling properties after recording.
The ink-jet technique has been applied to office printers and household printers, and is recently increasingly being applied in the field of commercial printing. In the commercial printing field, printed sheets are required to have an appearance similar to that of printed sheets obtained by using general printing paper, rather than paper having a surface that completely blocks penetration of ink solvent into the base paper such as that of a photograph. However, when a solvent absorption layer of a recording medium has a thickness of from 20 μm to 30 μm, characteristics such as surface gloss, texture and stiffness are limited. Therefore, the application of ink-jet techniques to commercial printing has been limited to, for example, posters and forms, for which the restrictions on surface gloss, texture, stiffness and the like are tolerable.
Furthermore, a recording medium for exclusive use in ink-jet recording is expensive since it is provided with a solvent absorbing layer and a water resistant layer, and this is also a factor that limits the application of ink-jet technology in the field of commercial printing.
As an ink-jet recording method for forming high quality images, a number of image recording methods in which a liquid composition for improving images is used in addition to a usual ink-jet ink, and the liquid composition is deposited on a recording medium prior to the ejection of the ink-jet ink, have been proposed (see, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (JP-A) No. 2004-59933). In this method, the components of the ink-jet ink are aggregated on the surface of paper by the action of a fixing component in the ink, whereby the ink is fixed before dullness or bleeding occurs.
Further, in view of accelerating penetration of an ink solvent into a recording medium, a technique in which a penetration liquid is used for accelerating penetration of the ink solvent into the recording medium and the penetration liquid contains a surfactant, and a technique of fixing an image portion and thereby enhancing the properties of the image portion such as glossiness, are known (see, for example, JP-A No. 2008-200855).